Should policies of affirmative action be regarded as useful even when they produce little material benefits for an oppressed minority? The question has considerable contemporary significance, being the subject of debate in many countries, including the United States.

Simon Chauchard’s closely researched, persuasively argued, and clearly written book presents the case in favor of affirmative action. Examining caste-based quotas for heads of village councils, implemented in India since the early 1990s, the author contends that the benefits of affirmative action have been considerable in this case. As positions of sarpanch (elected village council chair) are “reserved” for scheduled castes (SCs, formerly untouchables), psychic and behavioral changes are occurring. Public perceptions have changed, among both elites and SCs, and these changes are moving village society in a more egalitarian direction.

Rajasthan, a state in the northwest of India, is a hard case for testing these propositions. The preservation of feudal rule right up to the advent of national independence went together with a more entrenched caste structure than in (most of) the rest of India. Even today, in Rajasthan’s villages people of different castes live in separate neighborhoods, and until a few years ago were given to wearing caste-coded clothes and headdresses. Creeping Westernization, resulting from an increased contact with cities, has rendered differences based in caste less visible to the casual observer. Still, if caste and caste prejudice matter anywhere in India, they matter in Rajasthan villages. If the policy of reserving sarpanch positions for SCs has produced positive behavioral changes in Rajasthan, then it can be reasonably surmised that people in other states experienced egalitarian improvements.

In Why Representation Matters, Chauchard presents vivid and detailed depictions of life in Indian villages and the role played by caste in interpersonal relations. His description, in Chapter 3, of the everyday life of a sarpanch is by far the best I have read. He shows how sarpanchas make a big difference for villagers’ day-to-day interactions with government, even though sarpanchas have few real powers and hardly any discretionary resources.

Dealing with the grit of government is a very important undertaking for the average citizen, and sarpanchas spend vast amounts of time helping individuals conduct everyday transactions with government officials—obtaining a caste or domicile certificate, a below-poverty-line eligibility card, an entitlement to subsidized rations, etc. Gaps in information and access deter ordinary citizens from making these connections for themselves; sarpanchas step in to fill these gaps in the institutional infrastructure. As Chauchard shows, people who would otherwise have kept a distance from a SC sarpanch, on account of entrenched caste-based prejudices, are forced to transact, respectfully and often, with him. His authority, reviled and ridiculed as it may be in private spaces, is publicly acknowledged by upper-caste villagers. Ordinary SCs, seeing these inversions, begin to accept, and expect, better treatment. Everyday expressions of power relations become more equal.

Why is there no upper-caste backlash against the reservation policy? Chauchard argues that two reasons are primary: First, there has been no significant redistribution of income or wealth. Apart from a few members of the sarpanch’s family, other SCs have not become richer.

The second reason, as the author shows, is the “roster”—or the practice of rotating reserved positions among panchayats—village councils—which reassures upper castes that an SC sarpanch will not be around forever. At the end of his five-year term, the position will automatically become “unreserved.” Declaring some subset of panchayats as being permanently reserved for SCs might well have produced a strong backlash among the upper castes of those villages. Rotating the reservation for SCs in successive elections was a clever device for overcoming the anticipated resistance. Panchayats within each subdistrict-level administrative block are ranked from highest to lowest in terms of SC share in population. The top few panchayats on this list were designated for SC reservation in the first election after the policy was introduced. They were released from this obligation at the time of the second election; the roster moved down, and the next few panchayats became SC-reserved. In the example the author provides (in Table 5.1 at p. 146), the five highest-ranking panchayats in one administrative block were earmarked for SC reservation in the first rotation (in 1995); five years later, these panchayats were “unreserved,” and the next five panchayats were earmarked for SC reservation. In this example, a panchayat’s second turn at being SC-reserved comes around after 25 years. Other reservations are also built into the roster, including for women.

The rotation of panchayats in the roster serves as an opportunity for Chauchard to explore the effects of the reservation policy, relatively uncontaminated by other influences. He compares recently reserved panchayats with those listed next in the roster, selecting an equal number of panchayats above and below the point reached in the most recent rotation. The matched pairs of currently SC-reserved and about-to-be-reserved panchayats that he selects are close in terms of their percentages of SC residents, and they are also close in terms of other key characteristics (such as population size of the headquarter village, achieved by selection). The research design is a clever one, reducing the scope for contaminated results.

This research methodology, while it is good for the author's purposes, obscures another part of the picture. SC-reserved sarpanchas usually stay in office for no more than five years; relatively few are re-elected. But norms change slowly, and beliefs change even more slowly. Though strategic behaviors can be moderated quickly in order to attain gains with the new administration, changes in beliefs occur at a slower pace and may not be at all discerned using this method of investigation.

Chauchard is a self-conscious and innovative methodologist. He runs a parallel investigation using an audio survey of his design, administered in privacy and with care, and consisting of probing questions about perceptions and attitudes that he was able to put together in a nuanced and contextually relevant manner. Deep fieldwork, shadowing sarpanchas and meeting with a variety of people over an extended period, made it possible to conceive of these artificial but lifelike vignettes, first identifying and then giving accurate expression to a series of deep-rooted prejudices, such as are rarely expressed before casual acquaintances and fly-by surveyors.

The author finds evidence of significant psychic and behavioral changes in villages with SC sarpanchas: more frequent intermingling among upper and lower castes; growing realization that antidiscrimination laws exist and can be strictly implemented; greater willingness to do away with age-old customs (such as not sharing pots and pans, or dining together, with SC individuals); and increasing assertiveness among formerly meek SC villagers. Not surprisingly, however, given the recentness of the experience—just four and a half years after the “shock” was administered—little evidence is found that prejudices have retreated among upper-caste villagers or that self-esteem is greater to any considerable extent among SCs who have had a SC sarpanch during this period. Stereotypes, passed on with mother’s milk, have not changed in sync with practices and behaviors. Still, the gains in terms of more egalitarian and respectful public behaviors on the part of the elites, and greater assertiveness on the parts of SCs, are clearly visible. The material benefits may not have been widespread, but the policy of reservations has been well worth the effort.

Will the new ways last? Masks that are put on quickly can as quickly be set aside. What guarantees are there that when upper castes no longer have to deal with an SC sarpanch—a break that will occur just a few years later, as everyone knows—the situation will not revert to type, with the gains that were swiftly accrued being as swiftly eroded?

Chauchard is acutely aware of this question, and he deals with it carefully, bringing to bear the sense of optimism that he appears to have gained while living in these villages. I am familiar with the contexts he studies. I visit Rajasthan villages every year, and so I am inclined to believe, with Chauchard, that “beliefs and emotions are in practice related, and it seems difficult to understand how [SC] villagers who feel proud or walk taller in the shadow of power would not be more likely to reject stereotypes about themselves” (p. 213), leading, in turn, to a revision of beliefs about SCs, held by others. Once age-old taboos have been broken, it is unlikely they will be put back together.

The question, however, will ultimately have to be answered empirically: What happens when the term of an SC sarpanch comes to an end, and the reservation rolls over to the next panchayat on the roster? In villages where the period of SC reservation came to an end five, 10, or 15 years ago, what are the lasting impacts on attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions? I hope that Chauchard will revisit these villages, drawing out the longer-term effects of the reservation policy as sensitively and engagingly as he has drawn its short-term and medium-term effects.